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Friday, September 14, 2012

Non Stop Service

Took the LIRR to NYC.

Picked up some champagne.

Met up with Frank, Khary, and Bill to witness and celebrate the end of an era.

This day in history "A Soviet rocket crashes into the moon's surface, becoming the first man-made object sent from earth to reach the lunar surface. The event gave the Soviets a short-lived advantage in the "space race" and prompted even greater effort by the United States to develop its own space program."

Our peers and friends in London got together as we did in NYC to witness the shutdown and power off of a system called S77. This editorial system has shaped the news that the world has read for the past 3 decades. Senior developers, editors in charge, and some of the folks who have worked in and around editorial joined us in London and NYC.

Never before have I ever heard of a celebration, a retirement party of sorts for a machine.

Several attempts to replace the system failed. Typlan, Fleet, and News2Web could not deliver what S55 and its successor S77 could. Along comes LYNX and a new breed of developers. A company merged ...Reuters and Thomson. ThomsonReuters succeeds, and after nearly 2 years of service, LYNX has taken over and replaced S77 in all editorial bureaus that Reuters operates. Thousands of users have been assimilated. Long live Lynx.

I got to pop the corks on the champagne. Make the first and last toast. We laughed and recalled tales of days gone by. Out at lunch we realized that with some luck, LYNX will be around for a long time, and if it gets replaced, we all want to still be around.

Ironically, the Tandem NonStop systems at Reuters have stopped. The French Bistro we had lunch at has mention of Non Stop Service..... I like this place.

Photo of the day "Non Stop Service"

P.S. I ate escargot today. Snails. They were pretty good, but next time I am going to have to order the Onion Soup. No need to say "French Onion Soup" here......